The Martyrs of Uganda

Matthew 24:9-14

“The one who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations” (Mt 24:13-14).

Today we commemorate the martyrs of Uganda, a group of young pages in the court of the king of Buganda, who were executed for refusing to recant their Christian faith. This faith provided these men, who were caught up in overlapping power struggles, with another choice, an alternative power, a way of naming a truth and an allegiance that was greater than powers of chiefs or kings or empires.

The very bodies of these martyrs were sites of claims of personal power. The king had power over the use of their bodies, up to their deaths. In denying the king his traditional prerogatives, they undercut his very claim to authority over them. Their martyrdom signaled the king’s very failure of power.

They were also subject to generational rivalries. As younger men at court, future tribal leaders, they represented a threat to older and entrenched authorities. Their Christianity was weaponized as a pretense to dispose of rivals. In persisting in their confession of Christian faith, they acknowledged an authority higher, and an allegiance greater than what they had previously known. Their confession drew their gaze upward and outward.

Finally, they were caught up in transcultural encounters. Their conversion was the result of the intertwined projects of mission, colonialism, and empire. And yet, their very act of martyrdom led to the spread of Christianity and eased the way toward integrating it with traditional values: “By demonstrating to young people that Christianity could demand the highest courage,” historian John Iliffe writes, “the martyrdom was an important stage in breaking the heroic culture’s resistance to the new religion.”[1]

Faithfulness to their confession thus allowed the martyrs of Uganda to transform the network of power in which they found themselves enmeshed: to free themselves from bodily control by the king; to overcome courtly and tribal rivalries; and to use the instruments of empire to demonstrate that Christianity was also an African religion.

I’m sure many of us have experienced what it means to be caught in the middle of forces that we can’t understand, let alone control. Being unfairly judged, without recourse. At the whim of faceless bureaucracy, without leverage. Witnessing appalling injustice with no power to meaningfully effect change. With no tools, no weapons, no help except for a simple affirmation of faith, the sure knowledge that God is with you, bearing all of that with you now. And that God will give you the highest courage to endure, to persevere, and to know that your own simple, persistent affirmation of faith matters more than you can possibly imagine.

Amen.

[1] J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge, 2005), 173-74; cf. Lesser Feasts and Fasts (New York, 2022), 258: “The martyrs had left the indelible impression that Christianity was truly African, not simply a white man’s religion.”